See The World Burn
by ieheretic
Summary: He had made him forget, and then forced him to remember. And the world had become death.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So my brother convinced me to watch the Berserk film trilogy a little while ago and now my life is ruined. I've started the manga because I need it to fill the void but until I catch up I wrote this. I also decided to try a bit of a different writing format than my usual, so these aren't strictly linear pieces of story – I just decided to split it up into three chapters instead of having them all on the same page. Also, the fic is only rated M because of the second chapter.**

 **Contains spoilers for the Golden Age Arc, and some less important spoilers for what comes not long after. The title is from the song of the same name by Goran Dragas if anyone is curious.**

* * *

 **I. Grey**

Guts knew this wasn't the first time he'd wondered what the hell went on in Griffith's head, and knew it wouldn't be the last either.

Hair pale as a full moon fluttered in the wind, owner of said locks pursing his lips as if he were mulling over an answer. Guts wondered if Griffith was really thinking about it, or just pretending to for his sake.

"We have one less person vying to see both me dead and the Hawk destroyed, now that Midland holds us in such esteem. Isn't that a good thing?" Griffith asked, almost playful.

"I never said it wasn't," Guts replied. Smears of dew whetted the toes of his leather boots in the grass. The morning was young, pink sky melding with emerging blue and receding darkness like a good bruise. The city loomed behind them, but from this angle the dawn was true as the times when they camped in the wilds.

"Then what are you asking me?"

"I'm not asking. I'm telling. You started the conversation."

Griffith smiled in response. He poked the binding still on Guts' arm.

"That could've been your face. And that arrow fired by Julius' man could've pierced my heart. I'm starting to think you're good luck, Guts."

Something like nostalgia but much more insidious twisted in Guts' stomach. "Not luck. We're both just too stubborn to die when we're meant to," he said without letting the feeling reach his face.

"I never took you for a man to believe in fate," Griffith chuckled. "Just when I think I've figured you out – you never fail to surprise me with something unexpected."

" _Tch_. I believe in fate about as much as you do."

Griffith rose from his seat next to Guts, river-blue eyes gazing off into the horizon.

"That's right," he said. "The only set fate we have is choosing our own ambitions – or serving another's. God is much too busy to be granting free wishes."

Guts had never taken any of Griffith's philosophical musings too seriously at first. But that was back then, before he'd realized the extent of another's dream, the current that swept him up like chaff.

Griffith, he supposed, was like that. People were drawn to him, into his force of character, much like Guts felt himself the opposing tide that pushed them away.

He had always known he wasn't anyone special, that he didn't fit inside the overgrown anthill of humanity. None of the Hawk really did. Living by the sword marked you as a different kind of human from the rest.

Growing up that way had shown Guts that he was a freak even among outsiders. But then there had been Griffith, and just when Guts had started to think being a freak might not be so terrible after all, a few simple words and a child's blood on his hands had brought him crashing back down to earth.

He stood up a moment later, stretching his legs. He didn't want to be here with the waning daybreak anymore.

"The only ambitious choice I made was thinking my ass was gonna find that log comfortable for more than five minutes. Let's go get some breakfast," Guts said, breaking the pause.

Griffith turned to look over his shoulder. The sky beyond him was far lighter now that the earthen red of the behelit resting on his sternum.

"I heard that boy Adonis was killed too," he said suddenly. "What do you think, Guts? Was he cleaved in half with one swing? I wonder if he even had time to realize what was happening before the killing blow."

Unlike Griffith, what was in the child's head had been clear on his face.

The boy had been so fragile. Speared right through and Guts hadn't even felt the weight on his sword. Just the small hand in his, warm and yielding like a robin's egg and the moment had frozen there until the boy finally slouched over into death. No comfort to ease the passing except the arms of his murderer.

And for what?

Guts realized that he still had no answer for Casca, either. An answer for her would mean none left for himself.

"What's done is done. Difficult decisions must sometimes be made. And we are all the better for it, my friend," Griffith said into the pause.

The smaller man then walked past Guts, patting a hand on his shoulder as he moved by. Guts resisted his knee-jerk aversion to the physical contact and said nothing.

"Things are looking up. You'll see," Griffith promised. "Now come. Casca and the others are probably wondering where we are."

* * *

Including Griffith and a few other facts of life, Casca was fairly high on the list of things Guts didn't altogether understand. Of course, there was a great difference between understanding something, caring about it, and being forced to care because a certain hellion of a woman would throw things at you until you did.

" _I – said – get – out_!" Casca growled, punctuating each word with a hurl of whatever was unfortunate enough to be within her grabbing range.

It wasn't that she was often trying to hit him with things, even when provoked. It was just that nobody seemed to rile her up to this extent like he did. Then again, he was sure she'd resented him ever since they'd met, and all that had come after probably hadn't helped.

"Stop trying to break shit!" he said as a shoulder pad went sailing past him out the entrance.

"You won't leave me in peace!" she retorted.

"I didn't come here for you. I came to get my helmet and you just decide to have your time of the month whenever I'm around!"

Guts stepped further into the armoury, if only to avoid looking like an idiot standing cowed in the entrance by a woman. Even if that woman was one of the greatest fighters the Band of the Hawk had ever seen, second only to its leader and Guts himself. Maybe that was why she hated him so much – he'd displaced her. Not that it had been his intention; he didn't care that much either way.

"Your helmet's busted because you left formation and decided to charge the enemy alone _again_ , you asshole! You put everyone at risk by revealing your position and have the nerve to walk around like it's no big deal!" she berated.

He could stay with the Hawk until his hair was grey and she'd still be saying the same old thing, Guts thought. Did she really believe he acted like he did for the hell of it? That he thought nothing of the comrades he fought side by side with?

Although he knew he couldn't physically intimidate Casca, he took another few steps forward in the hopes she would back up – that way, he could get his helmet and leave without trying to get around her, stubborn as she was. He'd already had enough of the conversation and lest she start getting _him_ angry, he wanted to end things quickly.

But she didn't back up. The moment he started moving she lunged with a wide-angled, angry fist designed to break his nose. He seized her arm in the air just before impact, feeling the lean muscle beneath his grip go taught.

If it were someone else, Guts would have struck back.

He knew she'd probably hate him more for the thought, but he couldn't help it. He was rough around the edges, he was unburnished, yet even if Casca hadn't been pretty he could never have brought himself to strike her face. The tiny grain of chivalry that god-knew-how survived in him would rear its head and, because she was also his war comrade and not some stranger, he let the feeling restrain him.

Casca was simmering. She kept her dignity and didn't try to struggle away, but there was colour on her cheekbones and sharpness in her eyes.

"I don't know what more you want from me," Guts said. "I care about Griffith as much as you do. Is what I've shown over these past years not enough for you to stop hating me because of him?"

"I haven't said anything about Griffith," she retorted.

"We've had this fight a hundred times. I'm not an idiot."

"I beg to differ. Taking on a hundred men alone to prove whatever it is you're trying to prove sounds like idiot behaviour to me."

"It was less than a hundred considering you killed a few, but funny you should bring it up since it was _you_ who got us into that mess. How many times was it that I saved your life again?"

"I never asked for any of that!"

"Of course you wouldn't! But you will never have to ask me, Casca!"

Guts realized his admission, the way he'd said it, the moment it registered on his friend's face. He realized how tightly he was gripping her wrist and how close she had to stand to keep her arm relaxed, and the sudden awareness of her body heat.

Her dark, doe-like irises stared through him. Whenever Guts would picture her in his mind, he had always seen those eyes first.

And then Griffith's would follow, like a reminder to Guts that Casca wasn't his to think about.

He let go of her.

"Sorry," he said. "I'll... leave."

He began turning away to do just that when a gentle touch on his arm halted him.

"Guts. Wait." Her voice had lost much of its edge, so though it was still against his better judgment the swordsman returned his focus to Casca.

Her hand moved to hold the upper part of his forearm where it was uncovered by his gauntlet. Her thumb made a few small brushing motions over the skin there, almost like she wasn't aware of the movement.

Guts dragged his gaze up to her face. Her lips were parted slightly, brows creased in residual frustration, as if there were something she wanted to say and didn't know how to put into words.

He knew he wasn't any better with words than she was – the mantle of silver tongue belonged to Griffith. Yet now it was not Griffith's captivating speech but Casca's silence that kept Guts frozen, like a midnight snowfall on a traveller passing by.

"Um," a voice broke in from the entryway. "I really hope I'm not interrupting anything..."

A youthful head of blond hair and a face dusted with freckles peeked around the door frame, one nimble hand giving a wave in the air to help announce its owner's presence.

"Judeau," Casca acknowledged.

"Hey. Can I steal Guts from you? It's not that urgent, I suppose, if you're still talking..."

"It's fine. I was just leaving," Guts replied.

"Oh. Okay, if you say so," Judeau said as Guts walked past him out the exit. "I guess I'll catch you later then, Casca."

Guts didn't bother to pay much attention to the tail end of his companions' farewells, but eventually both Judeau and his voice caught up.

"Did you piss her off again? There's some wonderful testaments to her throwing arm out in the hallway," the knife-thrower himself said, adjusting his stride to stay even with the swordsman.

"Oh," Guts sounded.

"What?"

"I forgot to – nevermind." He let air hiss out between his teeth. "Damn woman."


	2. Chapter 2

****A/N: This segment is short because as it turns out, it's really hard to write as Griffith and detail what's going on in his head. Hope you enjoy anyway.**  
**

* * *

 **II. Red**

 _He_ had made him forget, and then forced him to remember. And the world had become death.

For of course, there had been no life in his future. He didn't even know if he could've been called a man anymore – an ammonite uncovered from the clay, a mere skeletal curl embraced around its own nothingness. A being that could no longer move, speak, or even crawl.

All that had kept his heart beating was a dream, twisting and turning in his mind. Maggots consuming what was left inside the shell.

People told of the ancient phoenix of myth, the hawk that dove into the inferno, striving for rebirth. It seemed a child's dream, half-formed from naive hopes and ignorant irony. _He_ had left and there was nothing but pale ash; nothing but heaps of winter snow and then the negligible warmth of a writhing woman's bed.

In hindsight, the demon god thought it was all very ironic.

It seemed like some nightmare now, lost in the valleys of blood and bodies below. Like he'd never been some broken sapling crushed by the wayside of success. In fact, he'd never felt so alive, had never felt so in-tune with the power of his body.

Where there had once been pale hair hanging around his shoulders, a white cape donned across his back, now there was a shadow made solid that enclosed him like a second skin. The inky mantle spooled down to his feet, feather-light. Femto himself felt weightless and solid. The woman in his claws felt pliant, smelled like flesh.

He had never taken intrinsic pleasure in a body before. No satisfaction for satisfaction's sake. He'd mostly used sex as a means to an end, to reach some higher goal on the road ahead, lacking the momentary gratification most sought it out for. However, there was one redeemable quality he'd discovered in these short-sighted pursuits, perhaps.

Perhaps it was the look on Guts' face as what had once been Griffith took what he wanted from the woman who had once been his – no, not his friend. His sword.

Griffith had lost himself. The straggling remnants of the Hawk had been all that was left to him upon rescue, and he hadn't even his words remaining to lead them. His sword had been the last thread to hold the Hawk together. And yet –

Yet when he overheard Guts and Casca pitying him, pitying themselves, Griffith had peered through the curtain into the things that no longer belonged to him and he had seethed.

He had seen how they'd embraced, how they'd spoken in soft words to each other and it had told him all he'd needed to know. Griffith was not the centre of their worlds anymore. He'd _endured_ for that eternal year, waited and hoped only for the next reprieve, the absence of pain as each piece of him disintegrated. He presumed, at some point during that time, that Guts had returned to the Hawk, but he had not done it for Griffith. Had not done it for the man he _belonged_ to.

The memory was bittersweet as the blood in Casca's mouth. When she finally came around him against her own volition, Femto made sure it was the last thing seared into Guts' right eye before that, too, was lost into the ever-gaping maw of the nightmare they had created together.

* * *

When Death arrived for Guts and Casca, he came on a black horse and swept them out of Hell the way a night storm would sweep the sea.

He looked just like the stories, Femto thought. A rider on horseback, with the ever-grinning visage of decay – a crown of horns atop the bone skull, eye sockets empty save for an innermost glint that indicated the spirit held a sharp sentience. He wielded a long, ripping spinal cord of a blade that matched the mountaintop angles of his armour, and when his gaze passed over the demon god, Femto sensed a piece of eternity inside his mind.

Femto was still new, and his powers unadjusted. His strength was not yet honed enough to prevent the intruder from absconding with all that was left of the Sacrifice. All that was left of Casca and Guts.

When the whirlwind was gone, when the silence remained from the absence of mortal life on the plain, Femto wondered, if only for a moment, why Death had never arrived for him.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: I rewrote this chapter literally dozens of times because I was never pleased with it, so I wound up just setting it aside for months (typical me, really). Ultimately I didn't want to leave it unfinished and the more recent manga chapters got me in my feelings, so I cracked down and came up with what you see.**

 **I do hope to write a longer story for Berserk in the future when I decide on an idea.  
**

* * *

 **III. Black**

Casca didn't want him to go.

The feeling curdled her insides like sour milk and stung warmth into her cheeks – or maybe that was the chill pinching at her exposed skin as they gathered there in the snow.

Griffith, standing pale under the waxing sunrise looked beautiful and distant as always like some winter spirit, save for the flush of life that the cold coaxed out on his face. But his eyes were glacial, glinting brighter than the shining blade he held extended in Guts' direction.

The other man's broad back was to her, swathed in midnight sheen. A plume of ash in a clouded sky, a spill of ink on a clean page. And that was what Guts was looking for, wasn't it? A new chapter to write with his own hands.

He frustrated her – _god_ did he frustrate her. But they were the same, in a way. Rage they didn't know what to do with, lives that had felt like shapeless clay until Griffith had come along to mend them how he saw fit. In that regard Casca had always seen Guts as someone she could reach. Yet now, at the time she wanted to more than ever, she couldn't. Couldn't hold him here with the people who cared for him, because they all knew the rest of the world didn't.

She didn't know what that feeling meant. She wasn't sure what the two of them were. Over all that time of bickering, a camaraderie had grown even greater than she had with the others, even Griffith or Judeau. Friendship – companionship. Each carrying the other's shortcomings with their own strengths. But the rare times Casca caught Guts looking at her like _that_ , she ceased to know once again.

Countless men had leered at her, even with her short hair and man's garb and sword at the ready. She could be covered in the blood and filth of battle and days without a proper bath and it didn't matter because she was Woman. Even the Hawk soldiers were not exempt sometimes, though they respected her prowess and had the sense to redirect their attention elsewhere. Griffith himself had never once deigned to any of this; he was above her. Yet Guts was her equal as a human being, and at the same time, a human man he was. No one had ever come to mean so much to her as both those things like he did, and it half scared her. And the two of them had never spoke of it.

None of it meant he was listening to her pleading now, the stubborn bastard. He wasn't listening to Griffith either, despite standing at the dangerous end of a pointed weapon.

"I told you before – you belong to me. It's like it was that day. I won you then with my sword, and you'll take your freedom back only by defeating me," Griffith uttered.

Guts looked so calm; in contrast the tenseness in Griffith's shoulders even from this distance was obvious, like he was made of marble.

"Griffith, please," Casca heard herself say.

"Would you settle for a smile and a fond farewell?" Guts replied to Griffith. When no words were returned, Guts exhaled.

"So be it," he said, and dropped his bag from his shoulder before drawing his blade.

Casca's eyes widened and she darted forward, compelled to stop things before they began. She knew neither of them would concede a battle until they or their opponent lay dead and she would not stand to see them try murdering one another over nothing.

"Stop this!" she demanded, clasping her hands over Guts' where they rested on the hilt of his sword. Her eyes darted between the two men. "What do you think you're doing? Are you actually willing to kill each other?"

Several feet away, Griffith arced his blade through the air with a hiss to demonstrate his resolve.

"Step aside and don't interfere, Casca," Guts said softly.

"Have you gone mad? If you go through with this, one of you is going to lose their life!" Casca retorted.

And then someone was pulling her away from him, away from the battle about to take place, and though she struggled and dug in her heels she had no grip in the snow and there was nothing she could do.

Deep down, she knew that they had to do this. He who lived by the sword would die by the sword – it was the way of the mercenary, _her_ way. But damn their creed and damn their success if it meant losing the people she'd bled so much for.

As she watched them stand off, a tiny, ugly part of her prayed that Griffith was still the stronger of the two. He might hold back, when he won, and then Guts would stay. He'd have to stay, on his warrior's honour, and things could go back to how they were before.

She blinked and almost missed it. Almost missed the shatter that echoed throughout the clearing and the shard that spiralled away through the air, plunking into the ground some distance away.

She did not miss the stony, stunned expression Griffith now wore and the large sword Guts held checkmate at the other man's neck.

Griffith dropped his now broken rapier and collapsed onto his knees, holding his sword arm in one hand – not in pain, but defeat.

Casca broke free again and ran to him, slowing when she neared. He didn't acknowledge her, nor the others right behind her. He didn't acknowledge Guts who had already sheathed his weapon was walking away, _walking away_ without anyone trying to stop him.

Casca began a running start after the other man and halted when she realized what she was doing. She couldn't follow, couldn't escape the things that tethered her to the shore while he drifted further and further with the tide of his own creation. There would be no current strong enough to bring Guts back unless he willed it.

She called his name. An ever-growing trail of footprints were left behind soon to disappear and their ocean retreated, taking him with it.

* * *

When he became the Beast, he felt nothing. His rage ceased to be an emotion – it became an instinct, a calling bound into his genetic code the way it is the nature of the wolf to hunt.

But a wolf could be slain. The entity that Guts became was immortal; not in physical body but in the power of its will. He hadn't felt that reckless since his days as Raid Leader of the Hawk, when he had nothing to lose and everything to earn from Griffith's approval. When if he did die, he'd die doing what he was best at. Now, he couldn't afford such a thing; humanity couldn't afford it because he knew he was the only one that could stop what Griffith had become.

Guts was only human, but the Berserker armour pushed what a mortal was capable of to its very capacity. He wasn't sure whether taking that form and being utterly, undeniably human at the same time should make him afraid or not.

When he looked down at his hands, the obsidian armour didn't show his reflection, not even a warped glimmer. Even if it had, he already knew what he'd find: a man with more scars than skin, disfigured, and dappled with a stark-white patch of hair amidst the black. A corporeal reminder of the years of life probably carved off, he thought. Not that it mattered. He'd never once thought he'd live to grow old in the first place.

After the Eclipse, when he'd been alone, he wasn't entirely sure if he _hadn't_ really died. If he was a revenant, the Black Swordsman, wearing the face of Guts the soldier whose body lived but soul had shattered.

He supposed he and Casca were still the same, then. At least until he'd realized that something – a lightness – had slowly managed to creep back into him since that day of reckoning. Not from any great declaration by the companions he might dare call friends now, not satisfaction from felling one of the thousands of demons Guts had encountered. But something small, maybe.

When Puck behaved like a fool to cheer him up, that offering the gesture mattered to the little fae at all. When Schierke stitched Guts back together over and over again, distressed over his safety, made him wonder if daughters were a thing or a feeling. Isidro, Serpico, Farnese; all had consigned their strength to be at Guts' side.

What did that make him?

He gazed out at the sea. Fathomless navy and murky green intermixed as far as the horizon, light playing upon the wave crests and salt tanging the sharp coastal air. The warrior did not have to be a sailor to know the power of the ocean – so different from the clear, flowing waters inland, fed by rain or underground channels.

Elfhelm was only an ocean away, the closest form of salvation that had ever been within his reach. He did not know what the outcome would be once they arrived there. He did not know if Casca even wanted to remember the thing Guts himself couldn't forget. But maybe, just maybe, if she could return to herself, it was proof something good could piece itself after being broken by Griffith. Guts himself didn't know if he had anything left to break except for that hope he barely dared to hold. That he would see Casca behind that empty woman's eyes instead of fear.

The Beast, it seemed, could not wait. Regardless of the outcome, it would pave the way for Griffith's kingdom to burn. That was not hope – it was certainty. Guts felt the darkness stir in his abdomen and he quelled his thoughts away.

He turned until the ocean was at his back. His allies were waiting for him to return, and they would cross it together.


End file.
